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Shutter (2008) [REVIEW]

This movie was part of the 5 for $20 deal at Blockbuster, which has caused both myself and Rampaige to end up with lots of wacky titles. I was smart enough to never pick out Drillbit Taylor, which is more than I can say for her. The description on the back of Shutter made me think it would be similar to the videogame Fatal Frame. I never played Fatal Frame, but I remember it had to do with taking pictures of ghosts or something. Almost like that game Dino Safari, but I’m getting sidetracked. Seriously though, never even played Fatal Frame, but always wanted to. Shutter is also about cameras and ghosts, but one huge difference…Joshua Fucking Jackson. Yeah, that’s right, mother fucking Pacey from Dawson’s Creek. Sadly, there were no other Dawson’s Creek cast members, nor were there any scenes involving Paula Cole singing “I Don’t Wanna Wait”.

Don’t look at that photo too long! You might see….A GHOST!!!!!!

Joshua Jackson’s character, who I will only refer to as Pacey, gets married to a blonde lady. The two of them move to Japan because he is a photographer and he needs to go to Japan for some reason. The blonde falls asleep driving and thinks she hits something, but it was actually a ghost, but we don’t find that out until later. Pacey meets up with Roy from The Office and the little wiener son from Nip/Tuck and they are a bunch of wieners together. Since Pacey is a photographer, the ghost his wife hit is mysteriously showing up in all his photos! Oh no! After some investigation, we learn the identity of the ghost, but not before the image of the ghost drive Roy and the wiener kid…TO THEIR DEATHS! We then learn what the cause of the ghost-ing is, and we find out Pacey was a jerk. The ghost was in love with him, so Roy and wiener boy drugged her, raped her, and took photos. Pacey’s wife found out, and wasn’t too happy, and left him. Pacey ends up in the insane asylum because he never got to kiss Katie Holmes.

No joke, one time I had a sunburn that looked like this.

This was nothing like what I thought the videogame would be like. I guess this movie gets bonus points for not being a remake of a Japanese horror movie, but it still isn’t exactly an original idea. It was kind of like that Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode where there was a gremlin living in the camera, except, worse. The best, just absolute best part of this film, was that because of the car accident, Pacey started having pain in his neck. He keeps rubbing his neck and whining about it. Then, when we get to the realization of what’s going on at the end of the movie, they show what happens when Pacey is in a photo. When this finally happens, we get to see A FUCKING GHOST SITTING ON HIS HEAD. The pain in his neck is the ghost sitting on him. That’s gotta be SOOO uncomfortable! So he tries to use a strobe from his camera to burn it off of his neck. Surprisingly, that has no effect. And when we see him sitting in an asylum at the end of the film, the ghost is leaning all up on him. It wasn’t a creative plot point or anything, it was just funny to see a ghost sitting on his shoulders.

EDIT – Immediately after writing this review, I found out it was a remake of a Thai horror movie. I just didn’t feel like changing that part because I’m lazy. Got a problem? Go to hell.

I don’t know who that person is but if you look closely (behind the scenes), you can rest assured it wasn’t me. My love for Josh Jackson prevents me from getting internet angry. Plus, this person’s name is “Plqw.” If that’s internet for anonymity, then you have to believe I’d be more creative than that. Also, this movie you reviewed was actually a remake of a Thai horror movie. Just an FYI.